SHARE: Scottish Health Research Register and Biobank

• Research type

  Research Tissue Bank

• IRAS ID

  278610

• Research summary

  SHARE: Scottish Health Research Register and Biobank

• REC name

  South East Scotland REC 02

• REC reference

  20/SS/0048

• Date of REC Opinion

  29 Apr 2020

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion

• Data collection arrangements

  The Scottish Health Research Register (SHARE) was created with the intention of establishing a resource of up to 1,000,000 adults who have consented to allow access to the use of their electronic health records, in order to identify them as potentially eligible for research. Optional additional consent is also taken at registration to allow for the collection of surplus blood following routine clinical testing rather than it being discarded.
  There is currently a biobank of surplus bloods, blood components & extracted genetic material from around 100,000 consented surplus bloods that covers a broad range of disease areas across NHS Fife, NHS Grampian & NHS Tayside. This is centrally held within the University of Dundee and is registered with Tayside Biorepository. As the registration of participants is an ongoing initiative, the corresponding interception of consented surplus SHARE bloods is able to be extended to other participating health boards across Scotland.
  The SHARE and Biobank's main storage and sample processing hub resides in laboratories within the Division of Population Health and Genomics, University of Dundee based within Ninewells Hospital, NHS Tayside. Additional satellite sites, for collection and temporary storage, are also established within the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, NHS fife within the blood sciences laboratories and Aberdeen Royal infirmary, NHS Grampian within NHS genetics. Further collection sites are in the process of becoming established in NHS Lanarkshire, NHS GGC and NHS Lothian in collaboration with the bio-repositories. Permission is requested from each NHS health board for sample collection to occur at each site.
  De-identified patient data can be associated with the tissue samples and furthermore the return of research data is welcomed in order to further enrich a data set available for access.

• Research programme

  SHARE continues to be an important resource to researchers and the public alike. Recruitment into research projects is a major concern for all health researchers and to funders. Research projects can experience delays, increased expense and, in some cases, project failure due to difficulty in recruiting and retaining participants in studies. By using SHARE, researchers can greatly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of recruitment into health research projects in Scotland- as the SHARE volunteers are people that have already expressed an interest in clinical research recruitment. SHARE enables members of the public to hear from an independent source; about research projects they may be suitable to take part in. It also enables people to indicate if they wish to be contacted to act as patient representatives on Patient and Public Involvement panels, a valuable resource to researchers who otherwise may have difficulty in finding this demographic. The purpose of this biobank is to provide an opportunity for access by commercial and non-commercial researchers to pre-consented surplus blood samples with a rich data set to help support medical research with a main focus on genotyping. This provides access to a wide range of options for analysis including a single variant through to whole genome sequencing. In addition other analytes such as proteins, hormones, metabolites and environmental molecules may be measured in fractions prepared from stored blood.

• Storage license

  N/A

• RTBTitle

  SHARE: Scottish Health Research Register and Biobank

• Establishment organisation

  University of Dundee

• Establishment organisation address

  Ninewells Hospital

  Dundee

  Scotland

  DD19SY